Life in Crayon
by Zevazo
Summary: 1980. Sirius is visiting with his favorite cousin, and is shocked to hear that Regulus has been killed. Second half is a monologue by Sirius, addressed to his brother's grave. Previously posted by Phinea.


**Life in Crayon**

**Disclaimer – **If I had any ambition, I would lead a crusade to end the torture of writing disclaimers. You know what? I haven't any. So, yeah, not mine, you know the drill.

**Author's Note – **This is a one-shot which consists largely of Sirius rambling. Enjoy. Or don't. I don't care, as long as you review it. I have got a monopoly on apathy tonight, haven't I?

"_Against my will_

_I stand beside my own reflection."_

— _Linkin Park_

Andromeda Tonks was in her kitchen, reaching into a high cupboard for various bottles. Her cousin Sirius was sitting at the sunlit table, watching her. Her kitchen was a clean, cheery room with red curtains, drawn open wide. "Nymph," she said over her shoulder.

"Yeah?" said her five-year-old from under the table, where she was coloring the linoleum.

"Do you suppose you could use paper?"

The five-year-old screwed up her face and shook her head. "Paper is boring," she said. But she emerged good-naturedly from beneath the table, and crawled into Sirius's lap, where she sat in order to color the table.

"She's really artistic," said Sirius, leaning over the girl's shoulder to watch her work.

"I know," said Andromeda with a sigh. "I need to get her some clay, if she hates paper so much. _Scourgify_ only does so much." Turning back from the counter, she passed Sirius a tumbler sloshing with liquid. He took a deep drink. "I can't wait until you have kids for me to spoil," she commented. "Can't you find yourself a girl who's willing to have you?"

He answered her smile with a mischievous grin of his own. "No woman can compare to you. Let me be your Perseus, Andromeda!"

"What, you're going to kill Aunt Medusa?" Andromeda snorted. "Do that and I'll gladly leave Ted for you. Muggle-borns have a thing about killing in-laws. It's like the weather, everyone complains about it, but no one does anything about it."

Sirius shrugged. "Sometimes we do. Anyway."

"How is Cambri?" Andromeda asked. She had a great liking for Sirius's hopeful fiancee.

"She's great. How are the Black sheep?"

"Bleating," said Andromeda disgustedly, "and following each other off cliffs."

"What, did someone else become a Death Eater?"

There was a long pause. "Ah, no," said Andromeda. "No, they're less than thrilled with the idea at the moment."

Sirius shrugged. "Good. I can use my own name again."

Andromeda looked at him, smiling distractedly. "I'm glad you're getting out of it. The family, I mean." She topped off his glass, which was still mostly full. "Our family isn't held together by love or anything resembling it. We're held together by secrets. I've always been proud of you for getting out of it."

Sirius smiled. "Me too! So they've withdrawn from Voldemort?"

Andromeda shrugged. "They still think he's got the right idea, but not getting in line to be his slaves."

Sirius nodded. "Good, they're slowly becoming saner. Maybe I'll start speaking to them again."

"I don't know how Aunt Ambreta would take that," said Andromeda, referring to his mother. "She might welcome you back as a replacement. Then again, she might curse you into oblivion."

Nymphadora looked up keenly. "What's oblivion?" she asked.

"Death and destruction," Andromeda defined it without hesitation.

Sirius was examining her face. "Replacement?"

She looked back at him. Andromeda was a warm, wholesomely beautiful woman, with long hair the color of dark coffee, but which glinted red in sunlight. Her eyes were large and dark. There was veela blood in her, somewhere back along the long and inbred family line – the Black family did not have the same prejudices against part-veelas, or even part-merpeople, that they held against other partbreeds. Sirius personally thought veelas were at least twice as dangerous as werewolves. Andromeda could be fairly dangerous herself. Her veela ancestor was a distant relation, though, and Bellatrix, Andromeda's dangerously beautiful older sister, was the only one who really showed the influence. She couldn't make men want to die for her as soon as she entered the room, though. It took time for her dark charms to take effect. "Sorry if that was a bad word choice," said Andromeda.

"I don't understand," Sirius said plaintively, searching her face. "Who would I be replacing?"

Andromeda stared at him for a moment, then pressed a hand over her eyes. "Merlin," she said compassionately. "No one told you." She turned to her daughter. "We need to have a grown-up talk, Nymph."

The five-year-old shrugged and slid off Sirius's lap, gathering her crayons. Sirius handed her the green and black ones, which she'd missed, and waited for her to leave the room. "What's going on, Andromeda?" he demanded as the door clicked shut.

She came around the table to take his hands and look at him sympathetically. "Sirius," she said gently, "Regulus is dead."

He pulled back, his face reflecting horror. "No," he said. "He can't be. He was supporting Voldemort, for God's sake –" His eyes grew sad, understanding. "Oh. They caught him."

Andromeda shook her head, biting her lip. "Oh, Sirius," she sympathized. "That's not – he was killed by the Death Eaters."

Sirius was bewildered. "What, he was a spy or something?"

"He got cold feet at the last minute." Andromeda stood and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "I'm sorry they didn't tell you, Siri," she whispered. "I didn't think – damn Ambreta!" she said fiercely, letting him go. "I didn't think she hated you that much. She's a silly, bitter old woman, and I hope she goes the way Regulus did."

"Andromeda –"

She turned sorrowful eyes on Sirius. "I'm sorry. You still love her, don't you?"

Sirius didn't answer that. There wasn't an answer for that. "I have to go," he said abruptly.

"I'm sorry," Andromeda apologized yet again. "Come back when you need to talk." She assumed that he would.

* * *

Do I still love her? What a question.

Nice headstone, little brother. Wish I could read Latin, like Cambri and Remus can. Then maybe I'd understand more of it than just our delightful little family motto. "Toujours pur." I always hated that. Maybe because I could never live up to it.

Although I can guess what else it says. "Dutiful son." "Scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black." All that delightful rot. Speaking of rot.

Sitting here, on a tombstone just the right height for perching on, I'm remembering how I used to hate it when Mother called you Reggie. I got back at her by calling you Lucy. Eventually she quit. You always wanted to get back at me for it. You never could. My name doesn't lend itself well to nicknames, except for Siri, and Bella and Meda were already calling me that. We all had nicknames when we were little. You were always Lucy behind your back, between Meda and me. Narcissa didn't know it, but we called her Sissy when she annoyed us. That was often. You know how she was.

Or do you? Do you know anything now?

Remus would laugh at me. I tease him for holding his little philosophy debates with himself, and here I am, sitting on Great-Great-Uncle Whosoever's tombstone, thinking about the nature of death.

Mother sent me a smug letter when you signed on with Voldemort – once again, her younger son was fulfilling all her dreams for her – and Remus was the first one I told. He gave me that look – the one that means "I know what you're thinking" – I hate that one a lot, and told me, "You don't have to feel responsible. You're not your brother's keeper." I told him of course I didn't feel responsible. I was just ashamed to know you, and considering changing my surname and moving to Bosnia. At the time I was ashamed to know you. Hell, I still am.

Remember –

I can't believe I'm talking to a dead body in a boneyard.

But anyway.

Remember the first time we decided to get drunk? I always thought it would be with James and Remus, but you showed up at my bedroom door that Christmas and you had the largest bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey I'd ever seen. "Life is short," you said, and grinned at me. We look alike, still. We didn't like to admit it but we do. Did. We have the same "evil little grin," as Cambri calls it. Who was whose twisted reflection?

Tonight we were going to get drunk for the first time. A rite of passage. We used to do things like that sometimes, crazy things. We were brothers then. We could be horribly sick together without embarassment. It was a rite of passage we shared ... the only one we ever shared, honestly. So you came in, and we were just getting into the bottle – I was teasing you because you were so tipsy already – and then Mother walked in. We might have known. She never did knock.

You never properly knew what happened, did you? She sent you away, it was too much for her baby's delicate eyes to see. Here's what. She got a belt from Dad's things. A really thick one, with a sharp silver buckle on one end, and a silver tip on the other. She made me take my robes and my shirt off, and then she made me get down on my knees on the bedroom floor, and she beat me. Beat the living _hell_ out of me. It was all my fault, you see. I had corrupted her precious baby. I thought she was finally done. And then she said, "You have blood on your back. Shall I wash it off for you?" And she poured what was left of the liquor over my back.

Our mother is such a sweet, loving woman, isn't she?

We didn't talk much after that. Mostly my fault. I was angry that I was the only one punished. Although, of course, I didn't tell her it was your idea. I do have honor.

Mother never even allowed you wine at meals for the next year. We'd had wine since we were five. She'd given up on me, though, by then – I could have carried a hip flask and she'd have said nothing, as long as you weren't "corrupted."

Damn her. It's too late for my damning her to have any effect, too late for me to care anymore, but damn her anyway.

That summer things were very cold in the Most Ancient House of Black, but I didn't care. A year after the famous Firewhiskey incident, the following Christmas, I went to the home of Cyril and Karenina Potter. They welcomed me as another son. I had a home again.

Mother could have forced me to come back, of course. Karenina would have fought for me, but nothing happened to me that can be prosecuted by law. The Muggles have laws against extreme physical discipline, you know, but we don't. I was stuck there until she did something that could really be considered assault. The Muggles have a lot of laws we don't have. They have laws against incest, for instance, and medical malpractice – Dad died in a hospital accident, remember? In the Muggle world, they'd be out of business by now. Of course, I wasn't too torn up when he died. He went to the hospital for a work injury and he didn't come back. If a hippogriff had come along and eaten him up in three bites, I could have gotten behind that, too.

Remus is half-blood. His mother's a Muggle. Which is why she keeps trying to find a cure for lycanthropy – she's absolutely convinced that magic can do anything. So he knows all about Muggles. It was Remus who told me about all the Muggle laws. He thinks I'm a complete abuse case. It wasn't that bad, really, though. I mean, we had plenty of physical discipline in our home, but most pureblood families do, in my experience.

I keep talking about Remus because I keep reminding myself of what he said to me. "You're not your brother's keeper."

We were children together, we were children who played with crayons and colored the linoleum. We were children who found paper boring, so we went on to life. Only you colored everything in your world black and green and silver and other acceptable colors, and I used the whole crayon box. It was artistic vision that separated you and me. Hey, it happens.

It was you who started the rumors about me and Remus, when I was in sixth year and you were in fourth. It wasn't true, not a word of it was true, you knew that. But by then, we were full-blown enemies. Mother had disowned me, and you were doing it too. No matter how many times I told you that there was nothing between us, you added to the rumor every couple of weeks, stirring some exotic spice into the school's ordinary-as-salt-and-pepper gossip culture. Even my girlfriend was teasing me about it. Nothing ever happened between us. Except for the mistletoe incident. That was a dare from James, though, and doesn't count. If I was interested in my own sex, Remus is the one I'd go after – especially since I slightly suspect he's not into girls – but I'd never have even considered the possibility if I wasn't hearing it from all sides – and that was completely your fault. But I'm off topic. What topic? I'm talking to a coffin.

We spent a great deal of energy torturing each other, little brother. Why? For you, I think, to please Mother. For me, to displease her. That was a high goal for me at the time. Still is. In some ways.

And then I graduated, and we haven't spoken much since.

Admittedly, I haven't spoken much with anyone in the family. Except for Andromeda, of course, and Uncle Alphard, but we've all been deleted from the pantheon. Alphard doesn't care. Meda – who knows? She's a brilliant actress. And me? I'm glad.

Andromeda doesn't know how much it meant to me when she said she was proud of me for getting out of the family. It's nice to know. But you can never get out of your family, you know – they follow you. You can change your name, but there's always someone who knows who you're related to.

Pity poor Cambri. If she really does intend to be married to me, she's going to have to take my name. We could still change it, but she says it's too much paperwork. Oh, well.

And all this rambling still leaves me, sitting on one marble tombstone and looking at another, both of them carved in a dead language which I don't even understand. All this rambling leaves me with the one knowledge: my little brother is dead.

And the further knowledge that there was some point, sometime, where I could have turned it around. At least once, there was surely something I could have done to change it. I know this much: the answer to the old question is yes. Yes, I am my brother's keeper, in some ways, at some points. There was a time when I could have stopped this. I missed it. Does this mean the fault is mine? Maybe. Probably, just a little bit. It was your choice; but I would have been able to change that. Sometime.

Sometimes it seems like we're all children, coloring our lives with crayons. Some of us color the paper, some of us color the table. I always liked the table, myself. Maybe sometime I should have taken your paper away.

I am my brother's keeper. I'm going to have to learn to live with that idea.

I think I can live with it.

**End**

All reviewers go to heaven.


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